Monday, April 23, 2012

Just deserts

(Premise) When one gets one's just deserts, one gets what one deserves.

(Premise) One can only deserve that comes from an agent or group of agents.

(Premise) There are cases of getting one's just deserts such that unless there is a God, then what one gets does not come from an agent or group of agents.

So, when one one gets one's just deserts, one gets something that comes from an agent. (1 and 2)

So, there is a God. (3 and 4)

The kinds of cases that I am thinking about in (3) are cases like when one has done something utterly terrible, and then an avalanche kills one, or one has done something really good, and then one wins a non-crooked lottery. These are cases where the only candidate for an agent behind the just deserts is God.

The basic line of thought is that one can talk about someone getting justice in cases where there is no human agency. But justice seems to be essentially the work of an agent or community. So either we are mistaken in talking of justice in such cases or we need to posit Providence (or aliens who work providentially, but the divine Providence hypothesis has other advantages).

11 comments:

I love it. This is parallel to the gratitude argument you blogged a while ago, but using justice instead. (A great candidate for a rationally persuasive circular argument, though it may be non-circular altogether in some contexts.)

I’m not happy with (3). Suppose that I do something pretty bad, which makes me deserve a punishment somewhat less than death. Suppose, then, that a force of nature injures me with the proportionate evil. If I have received my just deserts, then it seems that I no longer deserve punishment. (I have, so to speak, served my time.) But this seems false.

Grandpappy told my pappy Back in my day, son A man had to answer For the wicked thing he done. Take all the rope in Texas, Find a tall oak tree, Round up all of them bad boys, And hang 'em high in the streetFor all the people to see.

And justice is the one thing You should always find. You gotta saddle up your boys, You gotta draw a hard line, When the gun smoke settles, We'll sing a victory tune, And we'll all meet backAt the local saloon.

We got too many gangsters Doing dirty deeds,Too much corruption,And crime in the streets. It's time the long arm of the lawPut a few more in the ground. Send them all to their Maker, And he'll set them on down. You can bet, He'll set 'em down.

Cause justice is the one thing You should always find. You gotta saddle up your boys, You gotta draw a hard line. When the gunsmoke settles, We'll sing a victory tune, And we'll all meet back At the local saloon.

1. For punishment we need an appropriate connection between the misdeed and the punishment. In some cases--cases where we appropriately say "she got her just deserts"--there is such a connection. It's not enough that the law of nature cause a hardship after the sin. For instance, maybe it's necessary that the person experience this as a punishment, and maybe some evident causal connection is needed.

2. Maybe we need to distinguish between the wrong against community order, the wrong against the individual victim and the wrong against God. It may be that the first of these still remains in these kinds of cases, and so society still needs to punish?

3. The just deserts aren't enough, maybe. Sin is a great evil, and punishments civilly imposed are almost never sufficient (the "almost", though, is problematic for me). That's why there is sometimes hell or purgatory afterwards.

About Me

I am a philosopher at Baylor University. This blog, however, does not purport to express in any way the opinions of Baylor University. Amateur science and technology work should not be taken to be approved by Baylor University. Use all information at your own risk.